A germline polymorphism near PTHLH was associated with increased risk for the development of both sporadic (Ghoussaini et al., 2012) and BRCA1-mutation-associated breast cancer (Antoniou et al., 2012), and tumour expression of PTHLH promotes the formation of osteolytic lesions in bone (Guise et al., 1996; Sloan and Anderson, 2002). The gene discussed is BRCA1; the disease is breast cancer.